Jun 2, 2013

The Moments That Matter

I saw a little band named fun. on Friday night.
And between the shuffling to try and get a good vantage point (I’m really short, okay?), one thought kept popping into my head: I wish I’d paid more attention to the moments that didn’t matter.

I get caught up in med school. I do the unforgivable, I place my self-worth and self-belief in the feedback I receive until it’s late at night and I’m alone with my thoughts that tell me it’s not worth it, nothing’s worth it. My life becomes a series of achievements which I’ve failed to meet: didn’t clerk enough patients, didn’t do enough research, didn’t impress the doctors enough, didn’t know enough.

So, being the ever-composed medical student that I am, I started crying during the encore.
We fight and fight for med school. Our entire lives revolve around being a doctor. Getting the marks to pass, to get an internship, to get into specialty training, to pass our exams: when does it stop? In the grand scheme of all things med school, these moments matter. But are they more important than the moments that don’t matter, the moments that pass us by?
No.

I look back on this year so far and I see loss. I see three overdoses, two psychiatrists, a psychologist. I see disordered eating, I see hiding in tutorial rooms, too afraid to deal with people. I see a failed assignment, questions I couldn’t answer, laying in bed with my heart racing out of time, scared of waking up in the morning and going back to the hospital.
But then there are nights spent at concerts, driving around the city at three am looking for food, falling asleep on a friend’s floor. Days spent dancing with hand puppets and baking scones.
Moments which don’t matter to med school. Late-night Facebook chats won’t get you a career.